Month: February 2014

I believe that one of the biggest threats to the survival of humanity and life on earth in general lies in each individual’s undermining of herself and her capability of good. By avoiding the realization of our own potential impact on the world we escape from all responsibility to right the wrongs that we as humans have done and keep on doing even today. As long as we live in the illusion of being incomplete, insignificant, separate beings we unconsciously fuel the polluting mechanism that we ourselves have created in order to somehow fill the emptiness within us to avoid feeling petty and useless (which ironically leads us to feel even more petty and useless). Because we are taught from the very beginning that we need to acquire certain external skills and possessions in order to be complete, without being told at what point in time or space these possession will actually instigate this completion of the self, we continue in a hopeless never ending hunt for exterior wealth, for excess material properties, fame, popularity, reputation etc. Sadly none of that relates to our original self-worth. When following the traditional western philosophy of life and trying to meet the expectations of our fellow sickened people we too become sick and thus keep on contributing to a sicker world.

Instead we should follow the instinct that is rooted deep inside of our hearts that intrinsically excludes the notion of us being egotistic separate beings and instead implies that we are endless loving unities part of a bigger whole that serves a bigger purpose than the one to fulfill our shallow wants and desires.

This concept isn’t very new but I think that there is a topical opportunity in our present time for a new understanding of it since we are now more than ever able to be the witnesses of our own destruction. It is now that the matter is pressing and it is now that we know what a hazard we are to our own existence. If that is not enough for us to awaken and realize our power to affect the world in an equally positive way as we have been affecting it in a negative way for the past decades, then maybe we deserve the consequences that we are and will be facing. But hopefully, as enough people step up to their inner potential rather than listening to their damaging egotistic needs, we will become a cooperating mass movement going against the already instituted polluting mechanism that is still in rolling, and eventually we’ll reverse it. For this to happen we can no longer suppose that we as individuals are not enough, that we are just one unimportant person without any real power to change anything. We need to rid ourselves from that conviction promptly for the sake of all of us and instead recognize the immensity of our potential to save the planet one by one, all together.

If you think you are insignificant, try sleeping with a mosquito in your room.

I know we are all very preoccupied with our own lives and all the worries they might seem to or actually do entail. I know all people carry their own burdens and taking on other people’s burdens might seem impossible and undesirable at times. But I have this theory, it’s very simple but it has proved itself to be true for me over and over so I’d like you to at least consider it… it derives from a Swedish saying with just a little extra added to it and it goes like this: Shared joy is double the joy and shared pain is half the pain.

Living temporarily in India causes me to face issues that aren’t even in my repertoire of possible struggles in my own life. I don’t walk around begging for food and neither do I sleep on the pavement right next to a dumpster. The contrast between the comfort of my own life and the hardships of so many others’ is ever present and so apparent only by stepping out of my apartment…

If we could only take a little break from our rushed lives to step back and observe what we usually consider as our problems with a little more perspective and awareness than usual, we would probably notice that the things we classify as our ‘problems’ maybe won’t seem so big after all. And once we can see that our survival doesn’t depend on, say, our choice of outfit for the evening we can more easily acknowledge other people’s issues. Once we do this it gets harder to ignore when other’s are suffering because we have allowed them to be part of our circle of empathy- a circle that is meant to grow constantly in time and space- and we can help to relieve them by letting them share their pain and then rejoice by receiving their shared happiness.

I’m not saying we need to take on all the problems of the world and let them weigh us down but only that we need to allow ourselves to realize what we can actually do for others and also what others can do for us. It is a process of realizing that we are not alone, in fact we cannot be truly alone because non of us really are separate from each other unless we unconsciously or consciously create and uphold those imaginary boundaries in our minds. So actually, when we help another we help our self and when we help our self through them, automatically we are more inclined to help them. It is a cycle of positivity where happiness gets multiplied and suffering gets divided. It might sound like a childish utopian dream but I beg to assert that this way of thinking (and consequently acting) will necessarily have desired outcomes for every one, included whoever we consider ‘our self’.

However cliché it might sound this theory resonates with truth to the fact that no man is an island. We do rely on each other’s happiness. So if we could only reflect upon our lives with greater awareness for a second, and acknowledge through this slight shift of perspective what changes could be done in our not-so-often-questioned daily lives so that we can all cooperate in moving in a direction that everyone holds as something desirable for our selves and all our fellow beings.

I think most of you that are close to me have probably already read my article that was published in Elephant Journal recently and I was overjoyed to get such great responses from so many. Immediately I sat down to write some more and tried over and over to get something published again. You should know it isn’t so easy. After several refusals from online magazines but even more requests from friends and family to keep on sharing my ‘works’ (to use an overly ambitious word maybe), I decided to create this blog once and for all. Sharing my words publicly this way is not really something I have done before but I hope it will be to both mine and your benefit.